Considerations for joining flying club

Marty Ross wrote:
I'm considering joining a flying club this week. This one's the closest
club to where I live, the members, the planes, and the online scheduling
system seem to be great, and I think I'm ready to make the commitment (e.g.,
buy a share in the fleet).

Enjoyed reading all the responses to this, and I think mostly they are on the mark.

I'd add that based on my experience in two different clubs, the scheduling rules
about number of weekend overnights, etc. are pretty restrictive on the books,
but the actual enforcement of those rules is flexible. I've just pointed out
that I wanted to schedule a plane at a time that was beyond my quota, and asked
for special permission. It's never been refused. It seems the rules are there to
protect the club if they want to enforce them, but in individual cases they will
bend the rules in the best interest of all concerned.

Dave

In a previous article, Dave Butler said:
for special permission. It's never been refused. It seems the rules are
there to protect the club if they want to enforce them, but in individual
cases they will bend the rules in the best interest of all concerned.

In some cases, these sorts of restrictions were designed to "get" one
egregious offender to stop being an asshole. For instance, our club had a
guy who used to book our Lance, our biggest and most capable cross country
plane, for two week chunks, and then not fly at all or only fly it for one
day out of that whole chunk. So we put in a rule that if, half a hour
after the booking started that if the plane was still on the field,
somebody else could cancel your booking and take it himself if they made a
reasonable attempt to contact the person with the booking. So this guy
continued to make these two week bookings, but a few hours before the
booking was to start, he'd cancel the first day of it only. Then the next
day he'd cancel the next day. And so on until the entire two weeks had
gone by, and he hadn't flown it anywhere but he'd effectively prevented
anybody else from using it for more than day trips. So we contemplated
making a new rule to try and prevent that, but instead we finally wised up
and just kicked the ******* out of the club. We still have planes booked
that don't fly, but far less often.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
I don't have a sense of humour, merely an over-exaggerated sense
of revenge.
-- Stephen Harris